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Wednesday, June 1, 2016

France: Jews fleeing antisemitism become internal refugees

Some abandon France for
Israel, but many more escape violence, harassment at the hands of Muslim
neighbors by moving to Jewish population centers.

When Alain Benhamou walked into his apartment
near Paris in July 2015 and saw the words “dirty Jew” scrawled on the
wall, he knew it was time to leave.

It was his second such break-in in less than
three months and the 71-year-old no longer felt welcome in Bondy, a
Parisian suburb he had called home for more than 40 years.

“Until the years 2000-2005, the town was nice
and quiet, with 250 to 300 Jewish families and synagogues full on the
Sabbath,” Benhamou says. “Now, only about a hundred Jewish families remain.”

Benhamou is part of a growing number of French
Jews who have effectively become internal refugees, fleeing insecurity
and seeking protection in numbers in an atmosphere they say is
increasingly hostile, and often expressed in relation to conflict in the
Middle East. He moved a few miles south to Villemomble, where there is a larger and more established Jewish community.

But others have fled France altogether. A record 8,000 or so French Jews moved to
Israel in 2015 alone, according to Israeli figures, in the year that a
jihadist gunman linked to the Charlie Hebdo newspaper attackers killed
four Jews in a kosher supermarket. [...]

In nearby Raincy, Rabbi Moshe Lewin shares
Benhamou’s pessimism, fearing he could be one of the last Jewish leaders
in Seine-Saint-Denis.

“What upsets me is that in some areas of
France, Jews can no longer live peacefully, and that just five minutes
from my home, some are forced to hide their kippas (skullcaps) or their
Star of David,” he admits.

Even areas with a strong Jewish population, such as Sarcelles to the north, still have major problems.

Francois Pupponi, the Socialist mayor of
Sarcelles, says many Jewish residents come to him for help with stories
of being assaulted or having swastikas daubed on walls outside their
homes. Some have been caught in “extremely violent
situations” that in some cases required families to be “urgently
rehoused,” says Pupponi.

He become aware of “a phenomenon of internal migration” about five or six years ago, which he says “is getting worse.”